


Make Noise

by riverlight



Category: Southland
Genre: Con Artists, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:27:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverlight/pseuds/riverlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're con artists. Secrets are what they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goshemily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/gifts).



> So I asked for [prompts](http://riverlight82.tumblr.com/post/44814820106/ugh) yesterday while I was lying around being incapable of getting out of bed, and this is what resulted. Yeah, I don't know, either. 
> 
> Probably weird as shit, because: pain meds, and unbetaed, because—well, ditto. But hey. It's kinda freeing to just bang out a story without worrying!

1\. 

They meet in a gay club. 

It goes like this: 

Cooper's drowning his sorrows. Sherman eyes him from across the room: big guy, blond, buzzcut. No beer gut and biceps that strain his shirt when he moves, so maybe thirty, except for the wrinkled forehead and lines around his eyes that say he's pushing forty. Bottle of Jack on the bar.

"Buy you a drink?" Sherman says, sliding onto the stool next to him, and Cooper holds his eyes in the mirror. 

Cooper's eyes flick to to the whisky, then to Sherman's mouth. "Yeah," Cooper says. 

"Come here often?" Sherman says. 

"No," Cooper says, and doesn't elaborate. 

"Lemme guess," Sherman says. "Boyfriend left you." 

Cooper flicks an eyebrow. "Wife," he says. 

Sherman grimaces, purses his lips. "Make it a double," he says, to the bartender. 

There's a reason Cooper was in a gay club. What happens next is predictable. 

Two days after that, Cooper pulls the Van Hoek job. 

When the police come to take her statement, Shaniqua Johnson, partner at Van Hoek, Johnson, & Davis, swears she'd seen Cooper earlier that day. Not that she'd known who he was at the time, of course, but he'd caught her eye. "Rough guy like that," she says, "didn't seem like he fit in, you know? Saw him on my smoke break. Loitering." 

She didn't report it because she saw his jacket, realized he was from the firm they contracted with for security. She didn't seem to think much of the fact that she'd never seen him before. "I mean, come on," she tells the cop, impatient. "They're always swapping out the security staff. So this big white guy catches my attention, so what? All that means is that when I saw him later escorting some other white guy out of the building, I thought, great, he's doing his job. Security has to haul people out of here all the goddamned time."

Ms. Johnson doesn't have any clients who match the description she gives of the guy being escorted from the premises. Neither do her colleagues. 

After the Van Hoek job, word gets around that John Cooper's working with someone. No one knows more than that he's a tall drink of water who looks good in a suit. Big serious eyes. Charming.

He charmed Van Hoek, anyway, out of a cool couple of million.

2\. 

Except that's not how it goes at all. 

It's not a gay bar, it's a gala reception: ladies in furs and diamonds, men discussing their golf handicap or, discreetly, the au pair. Sherman's suit is gunmetal gray, his shirt a deep purple silk. The tailoring is exquisite. He has a pocket square. 

"Lemme guess," Cooper says. "Choate, Harvard, Wharton for your MBA, and now daddy's money bought you a seat on the board."

Sherman smirks. "Exeter, Harvard, and Stern, actually. And I got onto the board the honest way—I slept my way to the top." 

"Interesting talent," Cooper says, and snags a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. "You should put it to better use." 

Sherman's once-over is blatant. "You think a guy like you can offer me something better?" 

Cooper drains the champagne. "Won't know until you try," he says, and turns to leave. He doesn't check to see if Sherman's following. 

He is. 

It's not the most lucrative heist the city has ever seen, but considering that neither Cooper nor Sherman were at the reception for more than a half-hour, it's probably fair to say it was one of the more expensive evenings, minute-for-minute, on record for the insurance company, regardless. 

3\. 

The thing is, it could have been something else entirely. Most of the stories are anecdotes. Apocrypha. Like this one: 

"How'd you two meet?" Chickie says, idly. Cooper and Sherman don't work with other people, mostly, but they'll work with Chickie. She's always been smart, but there's an edge to her, since she lost custody of her kid.

Cooper smirks. "Jail," he says. "I saved his pretty ass from a bunch of bangers. Kid stuck around." Cooper always talks like he's reading headlines, like he has to pay by the word. 

"Nice try," Chickie says. Cooper's never been to jail. One minor drug possession charge is the only thing the cops have been able to make stick. Personal, not professional.

"Fine," Sherman offers. "I had a score to settle with my dad, needed some muscle. Coop came recommended." 

"Yeah, maybe," Chickie allows. "Crack shot like you, though? I don't buy it."

"You're a suspicious bitch, Chick," Sherman says, admiringly. "That's why we love you." 

"Fuck off, kid," Chickie says. "You gonna tell me, or what?"

Sherman just grins. "Naw, baby. Gotta maintain the mystery."

If anyone knows the truth, it's probably Chickie, but she's not telling. They're con artists. Secrets are what they do. 

 

4\. 

Besides which, if you're talking stories, the how isn't that interesting. More interesting is the who (they are) and the why (they do it):

John Cooper became a con man because he was fifteen and his father was a criminal and his mother wasn't around and where else was a fifteen year old kid going to get money to eat? (John Cooper became a cop because he wasn't going to be like his old man, and then they kicked him off the force because of a drug habit and he became a con man because he had nothing to lose.) (He became a con man because he had a drug habit and had to make money for pills, and it turned out he liked the thrill of the con more than he liked the rush of the drugs.) 

Ben Sherman became a con man because he was eight and he watched his mother get beaten up by thugs angry at his father; his mother played by the rules and got beaten up, Q.E.D. Ben wasn't going to play by the rules. (Ben Sherman became a con man because it was the ultimate fuck-you to his father, a little tarnish on his father's oh-so-shiny life, a dirty secret for a dirty lawyer.) (He became a con man because he was smart and he wanted to see if he could; he stayed a con man because he was good at it, and there are worse reasons.)

Ben Sherman lives in a mansion in the Hollywood hills. (John Cooper lives in a house in Edgewood.) (Ben Sherman hasn't had a home to go to since he left his father's house in ashes behind him; Ben Sherman stays in a series of expensive and glittery hotels.) (John Cooper hasn't had a home since his wife left him for being gay; John Cooper lives in a shitty converted industrial building by the L.A. basin.) (Ben Sherman and John Cooper are shacked up together, didn't you know? No, fuck, man, for real, I can't believe you hadn't heard that.) 

It's even possible some of the stories are even true. 

 

5\. 

And anyway, how they meet and why they do it isn't the important part. Anyone who's seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid knows it's how you go out that matters, in the end, and that story's still being written.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a random something I saw on the Nanwrimo [page](http://www.nanowrimo.org/about/history/), of all places. "Why'd you get into this?" / "Because we wanted to make noise."


End file.
